Why does public management—the art of the state—so often go wrong, producing failure and fiasco instead of public service, and what are the different ways in which control or regulation can be ...
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Why does public management—the art of the state—so often go wrong, producing failure and fiasco instead of public service, and what are the different ways in which control or regulation can be applied to government? Why do we find contradictory recipes for the improvement of public services, and are the forces of modernity set to produce worldwide convergence in ways of organizing government? This study aims to explore such questions, which are central to debates over public management. It combines contemporary and historical experience, and employs grid/group cultural theory as an organizing frame and method of exploration. Using examples from different places and eras, the study seeks to identify the recurring variety of ideas about how to organize public services—and contrary to widespread claims that modernization will bring a new global uniformity, it argues that variety is unlikely to disappear from doctrine and practice in public management. The book has three parts. Part I, Introductory, has three chapters that discuss various aspects of public management. Part II, Classic and Recurring Ideas in Public Management, has four chapters that discuss various ways of doing public management. Part III, Rhetoric, Modernity, and Science in Public Management, has three chapters that discuss the rhetoric, and culture of public management, contemporary public management, and the state of the art of the state.Less

The Art of the State : Culture, Rhetoric, and Public Management

Christopher Hood

Published in print: 2000-02-03

Why does public management—the art of the state—so often go wrong, producing failure and fiasco instead of public service, and what are the different ways in which control or regulation can be applied to government? Why do we find contradictory recipes for the improvement of public services, and are the forces of modernity set to produce worldwide convergence in ways of organizing government? This study aims to explore such questions, which are central to debates over public management. It combines contemporary and historical experience, and employs grid/group cultural theory as an organizing frame and method of exploration. Using examples from different places and eras, the study seeks to identify the recurring variety of ideas about how to organize public services—and contrary to widespread claims that modernization will bring a new global uniformity, it argues that variety is unlikely to disappear from doctrine and practice in public management. The book has three parts. Part I, Introductory, has three chapters that discuss various aspects of public management. Part II, Classic and Recurring Ideas in Public Management, has four chapters that discuss various ways of doing public management. Part III, Rhetoric, Modernity, and Science in Public Management, has three chapters that discuss the rhetoric, and culture of public management, contemporary public management, and the state of the art of the state.

This book elucidates the complex cross-cultural genealogy of themes, ideas, and practices crucial to the creation of a new hybrid form of Buddhism that has emerged within the last 150 years. Buddhism ...
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This book elucidates the complex cross-cultural genealogy of themes, ideas, and practices crucial to the creation of a new hybrid form of Buddhism that has emerged within the last 150 years. Buddhism modernism is not just Buddhism that happens to exist in the modern world but a distinct form of Buddhism constituted by cross-fertilization with western ideas and practices. Using primarily examples that have shaped western articulations of Buddhism, the book shows how modern representations of Buddhism have not only changed the way the tradition is understood, but have also generated new forms of demythologized, detraditionalized, and deinstitutionalized Buddhism. The book creates a lineage of Buddhist modernism that includes liberal borrowing from scientific vocabulary in reformulations of Buddhist concepts of causality, interdependence, and meditation. It also draws upon Romantic and Transcendentalist conceptions of cosmology, creativity, spontaneity, and the interior depths of the human being. Additionally, Buddhist modernism reconfigures Buddhism as a kind of psychology or interior science, drawing both upon analytic psychology and current trends in neurobiology. In its novel approaches to meditation and mindfulness, as well as political activism, it draws heavily from western individualism, distinctively modern modes of world-affirmation, liberal political sensibilities, and modernist literary sources. The book also examines this uniquely modern Buddhism as it moves into postmodern iterations and enters the currents of global communication, media, and commerce.Less

The Making of Buddhist Modernism

David L. McMahan

Published in print: 2009-02-01

This book elucidates the complex cross-cultural genealogy of themes, ideas, and practices crucial to the creation of a new hybrid form of Buddhism that has emerged within the last 150 years. Buddhism modernism is not just Buddhism that happens to exist in the modern world but a distinct form of Buddhism constituted by cross-fertilization with western ideas and practices. Using primarily examples that have shaped western articulations of Buddhism, the book shows how modern representations of Buddhism have not only changed the way the tradition is understood, but have also generated new forms of demythologized, detraditionalized, and deinstitutionalized Buddhism. The book creates a lineage of Buddhist modernism that includes liberal borrowing from scientific vocabulary in reformulations of Buddhist concepts of causality, interdependence, and meditation. It also draws upon Romantic and Transcendentalist conceptions of cosmology, creativity, spontaneity, and the interior depths of the human being. Additionally, Buddhist modernism reconfigures Buddhism as a kind of psychology or interior science, drawing both upon analytic psychology and current trends in neurobiology. In its novel approaches to meditation and mindfulness, as well as political activism, it draws heavily from western individualism, distinctively modern modes of world-affirmation, liberal political sensibilities, and modernist literary sources. The book also examines this uniquely modern Buddhism as it moves into postmodern iterations and enters the currents of global communication, media, and commerce.

The story of the African Choir, Zulu Choir, and Ladysmith Black Mambazo is a story about the disjunctures and ambiguities of racial, national, and personal identities. As such, this story highlights ...
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The story of the African Choir, Zulu Choir, and Ladysmith Black Mambazo is a story about the disjunctures and ambiguities of racial, national, and personal identities. As such, this story highlights the specific black forms of modernity emerging from the diasporic connections between Africa and the West.Less

Epilogue : The Art of the Impossible

Veit Erlmann

Published in print: 1999-07-29

The story of the African Choir, Zulu Choir, and Ladysmith Black Mambazo is a story about the disjunctures and ambiguities of racial, national, and personal identities. As such, this story highlights the specific black forms of modernity emerging from the diasporic connections between Africa and the West.

The conclusion summarizes the manners in which the economic, aesthetic, psychological, and anthropological re-visions enabled precisely these three myths to be taken up as a mirror of the modern ...
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The conclusion summarizes the manners in which the economic, aesthetic, psychological, and anthropological re-visions enabled precisely these three myths to be taken up as a mirror of the modern consciousness and suggests the essential modernity of myth as a vehicle for such ideas as sexual liberation, alienation, totalitarianism, technology, and personal liberation. It reviews the many forms and genres assumed from case to case by the three Cretan myths and concludes that their permeation of so many defining works of 20th-century literature, art, and musical drama convincingly demonstrates the remarkable resilience and modernity of ancient myth.Less

Conclusion: The Modernity of Myth

Theodore Ziolkowski

Published in print: 2008-07-17

The conclusion summarizes the manners in which the economic, aesthetic, psychological, and anthropological re-visions enabled precisely these three myths to be taken up as a mirror of the modern consciousness and suggests the essential modernity of myth as a vehicle for such ideas as sexual liberation, alienation, totalitarianism, technology, and personal liberation. It reviews the many forms and genres assumed from case to case by the three Cretan myths and concludes that their permeation of so many defining works of 20th-century literature, art, and musical drama convincingly demonstrates the remarkable resilience and modernity of ancient myth.

This book uses the writing of three 20th century Indian women to interrogate the status of the traditional archive, reading their memoirs, fictions, and histories as counter-narratives of colonial ...
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This book uses the writing of three 20th century Indian women to interrogate the status of the traditional archive, reading their memoirs, fictions, and histories as counter-narratives of colonial modernity. Janaki Majumdar was the daughter of the first president of the Indian National Congress. Her unpublished “Family History” (1935) stages the story of her parents' transnational marriage as a series of homes the family inhabited in Britain and India — thereby providing a heretofore unavailable narrative of the domestic face of 19th century Indian nationalism. Cornelia Sorabji was one of the first Indian women to qualify for the bar. Her memoirs (1934 and 1936) demonstrate her determination to rescue the zenana (women's quarters) and purdahnashin (secluded women) from the recesses of the orthodox home in order to counter the emancipationist claims of Gandhian nationalism. Last but not least, Attia Hosain's 1961 novel, Sunlight on Broken Column, represents the violence and trauma of partition through the biography of a young heroine called Laila and her family home. Taken together, their writings raise questions about what counts as an archive, offering insights into the relationship of women to memory and history, gender to fact and fiction, and feminism to nationalism and postcolonialism.Less

Dwelling in the Archive : Women Writing House, Home, and History in Late Colonial India

Antoinette Burton

Published in print: 2003-04-03

This book uses the writing of three 20th century Indian women to interrogate the status of the traditional archive, reading their memoirs, fictions, and histories as counter-narratives of colonial modernity. Janaki Majumdar was the daughter of the first president of the Indian National Congress. Her unpublished “Family History” (1935) stages the story of her parents' transnational marriage as a series of homes the family inhabited in Britain and India — thereby providing a heretofore unavailable narrative of the domestic face of 19th century Indian nationalism. Cornelia Sorabji was one of the first Indian women to qualify for the bar. Her memoirs (1934 and 1936) demonstrate her determination to rescue the zenana (women's quarters) and purdahnashin (secluded women) from the recesses of the orthodox home in order to counter the emancipationist claims of Gandhian nationalism. Last but not least, Attia Hosain's 1961 novel, Sunlight on Broken Column, represents the violence and trauma of partition through the biography of a young heroine called Laila and her family home. Taken together, their writings raise questions about what counts as an archive, offering insights into the relationship of women to memory and history, gender to fact and fiction, and feminism to nationalism and postcolonialism.

Jewish and Christian doctrines of creation, when interpreted as accounts of the moral and spiritual character of the world rather than simply its origin, hold the key to addressing a variety of ...
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Jewish and Christian doctrines of creation, when interpreted as accounts of the moral and spiritual character of the world rather than simply its origin, hold the key to addressing a variety of contemporary environmental concerns. They do so by showing how our identities as creatures lead to vocations that promote the care, peace, and celebration of creation. This account is developed through a sustained conversation with contemporary ecological science and agrarian thought. This book develops why the idea of creation has fallen upon hard times in modernity, and how something like a culture of creation might be envisioned that would pair ecologically informed theology with a variety of cultural concerns like education, economics, work, food, design, and built environments. This new interpretation of creation offers the possibility for a culture of justice and peace for humans and non-humans alike.Less

The Paradise of God : Renewing Religion in an Ecological Age

Norman Wirzba

Published in print: 2003-09-25

Jewish and Christian doctrines of creation, when interpreted as accounts of the moral and spiritual character of the world rather than simply its origin, hold the key to addressing a variety of contemporary environmental concerns. They do so by showing how our identities as creatures lead to vocations that promote the care, peace, and celebration of creation. This account is developed through a sustained conversation with contemporary ecological science and agrarian thought. This book develops why the idea of creation has fallen upon hard times in modernity, and how something like a culture of creation might be envisioned that would pair ecologically informed theology with a variety of cultural concerns like education, economics, work, food, design, and built environments. This new interpretation of creation offers the possibility for a culture of justice and peace for humans and non-humans alike.

Body by Weimar argues that male and female athletes fundamentally recast gender roles during Germany's turbulent post‐World War I years and established the basis for a modern body and ...
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Body by Weimar argues that male and female athletes fundamentally recast gender roles during Germany's turbulent post‐World War I years and established the basis for a modern body and modern sensibility that remain with us to this day. Athletes in the 1920s took the same techniques that were streamlining factories and offices and applied them to maximizing the efficiency of their own flesh and bones. Sportswomen and men embodied modernity — quite literally — in all of its competitive, time‐oriented excess and thereby helped to popularize, and even to naturalize, the sometimes threatening process of economic rationalization by linking it to their own personal success stories. Enthroned by the media as the new cultural icons, athletes radiated sexual empowerment, social mobility, and self‐determination. Champions in tennis, boxing, and track and field showed their fans how to be “modern,” and, in the process, sparked heated debates over the limits of the physical body, the obligations of citizens to the state, and the relationship between the sexes. If the images and debates in this book strike readers as familiar, it might well be because the ideal body of today — sleek, efficient, and equally available to men and women — received its first articulation in the fertile tumult of Germany's roaring twenties. After more than eighty years, we still want the Weimar body.Less

Body by Weimar : Athletes, Gender, and German Modernity

Erik N. Jensen

Published in print: 2010-10-07

Body by Weimar argues that male and female athletes fundamentally recast gender roles during Germany's turbulent post‐World War I years and established the basis for a modern body and modern sensibility that remain with us to this day. Athletes in the 1920s took the same techniques that were streamlining factories and offices and applied them to maximizing the efficiency of their own flesh and bones. Sportswomen and men embodied modernity — quite literally — in all of its competitive, time‐oriented excess and thereby helped to popularize, and even to naturalize, the sometimes threatening process of economic rationalization by linking it to their own personal success stories. Enthroned by the media as the new cultural icons, athletes radiated sexual empowerment, social mobility, and self‐determination. Champions in tennis, boxing, and track and field showed their fans how to be “modern,” and, in the process, sparked heated debates over the limits of the physical body, the obligations of citizens to the state, and the relationship between the sexes. If the images and debates in this book strike readers as familiar, it might well be because the ideal body of today — sleek, efficient, and equally available to men and women — received its first articulation in the fertile tumult of Germany's roaring twenties. After more than eighty years, we still want the Weimar body.

Indian society is extremely complex, particularly in the twentieth century. However, this complexity has not been captured by Indian social theory. One reason is the theoretical burden caused by ...
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Indian society is extremely complex, particularly in the twentieth century. However, this complexity has not been captured by Indian social theory. One reason is the theoretical burden caused by historical events such as colonialism, which incidentally brought modernity to India. Western modernity is mainly normative, and its norms include the concept of autonomous individual, freedom, and instrumental rationality. This normative project is sought to be ruthlessly implemented through modern programmes of secularism, nationalism, urbanization, and industrialization where the pre-modern is sought to be disinherited. This book explores the limitations surrounding Indian social theorists' views on Indian society. It discusses Partha Chatterjee's perspectives on Indian nationalism, Javeed Alam's interpretation of Indian secularism and the use of plural character of Indian society by some Indian social scientists, and Gopal Guru's proposal to move Dalits' lived experience from literature into social theory. The book also examines the limitations surrounding the reading of contemporary texts and activities of thinkers such as Mahatma Gandhi, Swami Vivekananda, B.R. Ambedkar, and Aurobindo Ghosh.Less

Modernity in Indian Social Theory

Published in print: 2011-02-03

Indian society is extremely complex, particularly in the twentieth century. However, this complexity has not been captured by Indian social theory. One reason is the theoretical burden caused by historical events such as colonialism, which incidentally brought modernity to India. Western modernity is mainly normative, and its norms include the concept of autonomous individual, freedom, and instrumental rationality. This normative project is sought to be ruthlessly implemented through modern programmes of secularism, nationalism, urbanization, and industrialization where the pre-modern is sought to be disinherited. This book explores the limitations surrounding Indian social theorists' views on Indian society. It discusses Partha Chatterjee's perspectives on Indian nationalism, Javeed Alam's interpretation of Indian secularism and the use of plural character of Indian society by some Indian social scientists, and Gopal Guru's proposal to move Dalits' lived experience from literature into social theory. The book also examines the limitations surrounding the reading of contemporary texts and activities of thinkers such as Mahatma Gandhi, Swami Vivekananda, B.R. Ambedkar, and Aurobindo Ghosh.

‘Anti‐illusionism is, I suspect, only a marking of time, a phase of recuperation, in the history of the novel. The question is, what next?’ (J. M. Coetzee). Placing Coetzee in relation to the long ...
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‘Anti‐illusionism is, I suspect, only a marking of time, a phase of recuperation, in the history of the novel. The question is, what next?’ (J. M. Coetzee). Placing Coetzee in relation to the long tradition of the novel, from Beckett, Kafka, and Dostoevsky to Richardson, Defoe, and Cervantes, this book argues that Coetzee's significance lies in the acuity with which he has explored the resources of that tradition as part of a sustained attempt to rethink the relationship between writing and politics. For Coetzee questions about the future of the novel are closely related to what it means to write after Beckett, and this book describes and evaluates the ways in which his fiction draws upon aspects of modernist writing to address the major questions posed by late twentieth‐century politics. The unsettling comic energy of Beckett's prose, especially its insistent complication of tone and register, was, as Coetzee put it, nothing less than ‘a secret…that I wanted to make my own’, and Patrick Hayes brings to the fore the little‐discussed comedic dimension of Coetzee's writing. Opening up a range of new approaches to this major contemporary author, J. M. Coetzee and the Novel argues that it is only by paying especially close attention to the experience of reading Coetzee's complex and nuanced fiction that its important impact on longstanding questions about identity, community, and the nature of political modernity can be appreciated.Less

J.M. Coetzee and the Novel : Writing and Politics after Beckett

Patrick Hayes

Published in print: 2010-08-25

‘Anti‐illusionism is, I suspect, only a marking of time, a phase of recuperation, in the history of the novel. The question is, what next?’ (J. M. Coetzee). Placing Coetzee in relation to the long tradition of the novel, from Beckett, Kafka, and Dostoevsky to Richardson, Defoe, and Cervantes, this book argues that Coetzee's significance lies in the acuity with which he has explored the resources of that tradition as part of a sustained attempt to rethink the relationship between writing and politics. For Coetzee questions about the future of the novel are closely related to what it means to write after Beckett, and this book describes and evaluates the ways in which his fiction draws upon aspects of modernist writing to address the major questions posed by late twentieth‐century politics. The unsettling comic energy of Beckett's prose, especially its insistent complication of tone and register, was, as Coetzee put it, nothing less than ‘a secret…that I wanted to make my own’, and Patrick Hayes brings to the fore the little‐discussed comedic dimension of Coetzee's writing. Opening up a range of new approaches to this major contemporary author, J. M. Coetzee and the Novel argues that it is only by paying especially close attention to the experience of reading Coetzee's complex and nuanced fiction that its important impact on longstanding questions about identity, community, and the nature of political modernity can be appreciated.

Some social theorists in India, including Partha Chatterjee, Javeed Alam, and Gopal Guru, have failed to recognize the core project of modernity and its social consequences. Instead, they were ...
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Some social theorists in India, including Partha Chatterjee, Javeed Alam, and Gopal Guru, have failed to recognize the core project of modernity and its social consequences. Instead, they were preoccupied with the themes of modernity including reason or the ‘cunning of reason’, ‘individualism’ or ‘individuation’, nationalism, secularism, and universalism. This prevented them from recognizing the internal project of modernity. This also prevented others from seeing some important and unique issues including internal criticism that is evident in the writings of contemporary Indian thinkers like Swami Vivekananda, and prevented them from identifying a third kind of action in Mahatma Gandhi, namely, inaction. This book argues that, unlike the West, social theory in India was unable to grasp the philosophical foundations of modernity that lies in its method.Less

Conclusion

A. Raghuramaraju

Published in print: 2011-02-03

Some social theorists in India, including Partha Chatterjee, Javeed Alam, and Gopal Guru, have failed to recognize the core project of modernity and its social consequences. Instead, they were preoccupied with the themes of modernity including reason or the ‘cunning of reason’, ‘individualism’ or ‘individuation’, nationalism, secularism, and universalism. This prevented them from recognizing the internal project of modernity. This also prevented others from seeing some important and unique issues including internal criticism that is evident in the writings of contemporary Indian thinkers like Swami Vivekananda, and prevented them from identifying a third kind of action in Mahatma Gandhi, namely, inaction. This book argues that, unlike the West, social theory in India was unable to grasp the philosophical foundations of modernity that lies in its method.

The French nobility was acculturated to violence that coexisted with courtliness. Feuding is indelibly associated with the Middle Ages, with a culture that is opposed to modernity. But, in fact, ...
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The French nobility was acculturated to violence that coexisted with courtliness. Feuding is indelibly associated with the Middle Ages, with a culture that is opposed to modernity. But, in fact, evidence for feuding in France before 1559 is fragmentary. Among the aristocracy at least private violence was increasingly under control during the late Middle Ages: revenge killing as a feature of high politics had been eradicated by the beginning of the 16th century. Factors often identified with modernity did much to create the conditions for a recrudescence of vindicatory violence: social mobility, Protestantism, and duelling. Vindicatory violence increased in France because of, not in spite of, the social and economic dynamism associated with the Renaissance, as the traditional elite was challenged by the enterprising and socially mobile.Less

Conclusion

Stuart Carroll

Published in print: 2006-05-25

The French nobility was acculturated to violence that coexisted with courtliness. Feuding is indelibly associated with the Middle Ages, with a culture that is opposed to modernity. But, in fact, evidence for feuding in France before 1559 is fragmentary. Among the aristocracy at least private violence was increasingly under control during the late Middle Ages: revenge killing as a feature of high politics had been eradicated by the beginning of the 16th century. Factors often identified with modernity did much to create the conditions for a recrudescence of vindicatory violence: social mobility, Protestantism, and duelling. Vindicatory violence increased in France because of, not in spite of, the social and economic dynamism associated with the Renaissance, as the traditional elite was challenged by the enterprising and socially mobile.

This book focuses on travelogues by Iranians traveling to Europe in the nineteenth century. It argues for an interpretive framework that moves away from an overemphasis on the destinations of travel ...
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This book focuses on travelogues by Iranians traveling to Europe in the nineteenth century. It argues for an interpretive framework that moves away from an overemphasis on the destinations of travel (particularly in cases where the destination, such as Europe, signifies larger meanings such as modernity) and that historicizes the travelogue itself as a rhetorical text in the service of its origin’s concerns and developments. Within this framework, this book demonstrates the ways in which travel writings from Iran to Europe were used to position Qajar Iran (1794–1925) within a global context—that is, narration of travel to Europe was also narrating the power of the Qajar court even when political events were tipped against it—and relatedly, how both travel to Europe and also translations of travel narratives into Persian should be included in our understanding of the importance of geography and mapping to the Qajars, especially during the latter half of the nineteenth century. In this process, it also reexamines the notion that Iranian modernity was the chief outcome of Iranians traveling in and writing about Europe.Less

Taken for Wonder : Nineteenth Century Travel Accounts from Iran to Europe

Naghmeh Sohrabi

Published in print: 2012-05-10

This book focuses on travelogues by Iranians traveling to Europe in the nineteenth century. It argues for an interpretive framework that moves away from an overemphasis on the destinations of travel (particularly in cases where the destination, such as Europe, signifies larger meanings such as modernity) and that historicizes the travelogue itself as a rhetorical text in the service of its origin’s concerns and developments. Within this framework, this book demonstrates the ways in which travel writings from Iran to Europe were used to position Qajar Iran (1794–1925) within a global context—that is, narration of travel to Europe was also narrating the power of the Qajar court even when political events were tipped against it—and relatedly, how both travel to Europe and also translations of travel narratives into Persian should be included in our understanding of the importance of geography and mapping to the Qajars, especially during the latter half of the nineteenth century. In this process, it also reexamines the notion that Iranian modernity was the chief outcome of Iranians traveling in and writing about Europe.

This is the first book about the origins of a culture war that began in early modern Europe and continues to this day: the debate between kabbalists and their critics on the nature of Judaism and the ...
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This is the first book about the origins of a culture war that began in early modern Europe and continues to this day: the debate between kabbalists and their critics on the nature of Judaism and the meaning of religious tradition. From its medieval beginnings as an esoteric form of Jewish mysticism, Kabbalah spread throughout the early modern world and became a central feature of Jewish life. Scholars have long studied the revolutionary impact of Kabbalah, but, as this book argues, they have misunderstood the character and timing of opposition to it. Drawing on a range of previously unexamined sources, this book tells the story of the first criticism of Kabbalah, Ari Nohem, written by Leon Modena in Venice in 1639. In this scathing indictment of Venetian Jews who had embraced Kabbalah as an authentic form of ancient esotericism, Modena proved the recent origins of Kabbalah and sought to convince his readers to return to the spiritualized rationalism of Maimonides. This book examines the hallmarks of Jewish modernity displayed by Modena's attack—a critical analysis of sacred texts, skepticism about religious truths, and self-consciousness about the past—and shows how these qualities and the later history of his polemic challenge conventional understandings of the relationship between Kabbalah and modernity. The book argues that Kabbalah was the subject of critical inquiry in the very period it came to dominate Jewish life rather than centuries later as most scholars have thought.Less

The Scandal of Kabbalah : Leon Modena, Jewish Mysticism, Early Modern Venice

Yaacob Dweck

Published in print: 2011-08-21

This is the first book about the origins of a culture war that began in early modern Europe and continues to this day: the debate between kabbalists and their critics on the nature of Judaism and the meaning of religious tradition. From its medieval beginnings as an esoteric form of Jewish mysticism, Kabbalah spread throughout the early modern world and became a central feature of Jewish life. Scholars have long studied the revolutionary impact of Kabbalah, but, as this book argues, they have misunderstood the character and timing of opposition to it. Drawing on a range of previously unexamined sources, this book tells the story of the first criticism of Kabbalah, Ari Nohem, written by Leon Modena in Venice in 1639. In this scathing indictment of Venetian Jews who had embraced Kabbalah as an authentic form of ancient esotericism, Modena proved the recent origins of Kabbalah and sought to convince his readers to return to the spiritualized rationalism of Maimonides. This book examines the hallmarks of Jewish modernity displayed by Modena's attack—a critical analysis of sacred texts, skepticism about religious truths, and self-consciousness about the past—and shows how these qualities and the later history of his polemic challenge conventional understandings of the relationship between Kabbalah and modernity. The book argues that Kabbalah was the subject of critical inquiry in the very period it came to dominate Jewish life rather than centuries later as most scholars have thought.

This book challenges the notion that modernity in China and India are derivative imitations of the West, arguing that these societies have transformed their ancient traditions in unique and ...
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This book challenges the notion that modernity in China and India are derivative imitations of the West, arguing that these societies have transformed their ancient traditions in unique and distinctive ways. The book begins with nineteenth-century imperial history, exploring how Western concepts of spirituality, secularity, religion, and magic were used to translate the traditions of India and China. The book traces how modern Western notions of religion and magic were incorporated into the respective nation-building projects of Chinese and Indian nationalist intellectuals, yet how modernity in China and India is by no means uniform. While religion is a centerpiece of Indian nationalism, it is viewed in China as an obstacle to progress that must be marginalized and controlled. The book moves deftly from Kandinsky's understanding of spirituality in art to Indian yoga and Chinese qi gong, from modern theories of secularism to histories of Christian conversion, from Orientalist constructions of religion to Chinese campaigns against magic and superstition, and from Muslim Kashmir to Muslim Xinjiang.Less

The Modern Spirit of Asia : The Spiritual and the Secular in China and India

Peter van der Veer

Published in print: 2013-10-27

This book challenges the notion that modernity in China and India are derivative imitations of the West, arguing that these societies have transformed their ancient traditions in unique and distinctive ways. The book begins with nineteenth-century imperial history, exploring how Western concepts of spirituality, secularity, religion, and magic were used to translate the traditions of India and China. The book traces how modern Western notions of religion and magic were incorporated into the respective nation-building projects of Chinese and Indian nationalist intellectuals, yet how modernity in China and India is by no means uniform. While religion is a centerpiece of Indian nationalism, it is viewed in China as an obstacle to progress that must be marginalized and controlled. The book moves deftly from Kandinsky's understanding of spirituality in art to Indian yoga and Chinese qi gong, from modern theories of secularism to histories of Christian conversion, from Orientalist constructions of religion to Chinese campaigns against magic and superstition, and from Muslim Kashmir to Muslim Xinjiang.

The Soviet Union created a unique form of urban modernity, developing institutions of social provisioning for hundreds of millions of people in small and medium-sized industrial cities spread across ...
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The Soviet Union created a unique form of urban modernity, developing institutions of social provisioning for hundreds of millions of people in small and medium-sized industrial cities spread across a vast territory. After the collapse of socialism, these institutions were profoundly shaken—casualties, in the eyes of many observers, of market-oriented reforms associated with neoliberalism and the Washington Consensus. This book examines reform in Russia beyond the Washington Consensus. It turns attention from the noisy battles over stabilization and privatization during the 1990s to subsequent reforms that grapple with the mundane details of pipes, wires, bureaucratic routines, and budgetary formulas that made up the Soviet social state. Drawing on Michel Foucault's lectures from the late 1970s, the book uses the Russian case to examine neoliberalism as a central form of political rationality in contemporary societies. The book's basic finding—that neoliberal reforms provide a justification for redistribution and social welfare, and may work to preserve the norms and forms of social modernity—lays the groundwork for a critical revision of conventional understandings of these topics.Less

Post-Soviet Social : Neoliberalism, Social Modernity, Biopolitics

Stephen J. Collier

Published in print: 2011-08-28

The Soviet Union created a unique form of urban modernity, developing institutions of social provisioning for hundreds of millions of people in small and medium-sized industrial cities spread across a vast territory. After the collapse of socialism, these institutions were profoundly shaken—casualties, in the eyes of many observers, of market-oriented reforms associated with neoliberalism and the Washington Consensus. This book examines reform in Russia beyond the Washington Consensus. It turns attention from the noisy battles over stabilization and privatization during the 1990s to subsequent reforms that grapple with the mundane details of pipes, wires, bureaucratic routines, and budgetary formulas that made up the Soviet social state. Drawing on Michel Foucault's lectures from the late 1970s, the book uses the Russian case to examine neoliberalism as a central form of political rationality in contemporary societies. The book's basic finding—that neoliberal reforms provide a justification for redistribution and social welfare, and may work to preserve the norms and forms of social modernity—lays the groundwork for a critical revision of conventional understandings of these topics.

This book reconceptualizes American modernity by focusing on rurality and women. It challenges the notion of the city as the privileged site of modern experience, arguing that rurality—urbanity’s ...
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This book reconceptualizes American modernity by focusing on rurality and women. It challenges the notion of the city as the privileged site of modern experience, arguing that rurality—urbanity’s opposite, frequently associated with nostalgia and feminine sentimentality—was a fruitful geographic and psychic location for registering women’s perceptions of the modern. As its title implies, however, it is less about the empirical facts of farm life than about its abstractions—the idea of rurality, and the ways in which women were positioned, by themselves and others, in reference to it. Attending closely to language, images, and figurative connections, it demonstrates the theoretical importance of rurality to the imaginative construction of American modernity and modernism, and asserts that women had a special stake in that relation. To that end, it considers idea(l)s of women and rurality across a broad field of discourses and representational arenas, including social theory, periodical literature, literary criticism, photography, and, especially, women’s rural fiction (“low” and “high”). It engages such diverse subjects as eugenics, advertising, the literary prize culture of the 1920s, and the role of the camera in defining women as modern. It also relies on substantial archival research, and explores at length an underrecognized periodical, The Farmer’s Wife, which was the single nationally distributed farm periodical for women in the twentieth century. Ultimately, the book’s aim is to articulate an alternative mode of American modernism that had special meaning and appeal for women, and to show how that mode clearly responded to prevalent attitudes about agrarianism, modernity, and gender in the culture at large.Less

A New Heartland : Women, Modernity, and the Agrarian Ideal in America

Janet Gallingani Casey

Published in print: 2009-06-01

This book reconceptualizes American modernity by focusing on rurality and women. It challenges the notion of the city as the privileged site of modern experience, arguing that rurality—urbanity’s opposite, frequently associated with nostalgia and feminine sentimentality—was a fruitful geographic and psychic location for registering women’s perceptions of the modern. As its title implies, however, it is less about the empirical facts of farm life than about its abstractions—the idea of rurality, and the ways in which women were positioned, by themselves and others, in reference to it. Attending closely to language, images, and figurative connections, it demonstrates the theoretical importance of rurality to the imaginative construction of American modernity and modernism, and asserts that women had a special stake in that relation. To that end, it considers idea(l)s of women and rurality across a broad field of discourses and representational arenas, including social theory, periodical literature, literary criticism, photography, and, especially, women’s rural fiction (“low” and “high”). It engages such diverse subjects as eugenics, advertising, the literary prize culture of the 1920s, and the role of the camera in defining women as modern. It also relies on substantial archival research, and explores at length an underrecognized periodical, The Farmer’s Wife, which was the single nationally distributed farm periodical for women in the twentieth century. Ultimately, the book’s aim is to articulate an alternative mode of American modernism that had special meaning and appeal for women, and to show how that mode clearly responded to prevalent attitudes about agrarianism, modernity, and gender in the culture at large.

This introductory chapter outlines the strategy of the book as a whole. This book is an investigation of the different conceptions that have been entertained in eight major areas of human experience: ...
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This introductory chapter outlines the strategy of the book as a whole. This book is an investigation of the different conceptions that have been entertained in eight major areas of human experience: philosophy, mathematics, history, medicine, art, law, religion, and science. One recurrent theme is the different ways in which those intellectual disciplines have developed in different ancient and modern societies and the roles of elites in such processes, both positive ones, in encouraging the professionalization of the investigation, and negative, when elites lay down restrictive definitions of the subject-matter concerned. A second is the need to challenge modern Western assumptions on the nature of each discipline. A third is the struggle between different disciplines for hegemonic status.Less

Introduction

G. E. R. Lloyd

Published in print: 2009-07-01

This introductory chapter outlines the strategy of the book as a whole. This book is an investigation of the different conceptions that have been entertained in eight major areas of human experience: philosophy, mathematics, history, medicine, art, law, religion, and science. One recurrent theme is the different ways in which those intellectual disciplines have developed in different ancient and modern societies and the roles of elites in such processes, both positive ones, in encouraging the professionalization of the investigation, and negative, when elites lay down restrictive definitions of the subject-matter concerned. A second is the need to challenge modern Western assumptions on the nature of each discipline. A third is the struggle between different disciplines for hegemonic status.

A study which relates Conrad’s work to the crisis of modernity in the late 19th century, this book discusses ‘faultlines’ — ambiguities and apparent aesthetic ruptures — in nine of the major novels ...
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A study which relates Conrad’s work to the crisis of modernity in the late 19th century, this book discusses ‘faultlines’ — ambiguities and apparent aesthetic ruptures — in nine of the major novels and novellas. These faultlines are diagnosed as the symptoms of an unresolved tension between Conrad’s temperamental affinity with the Nietzschean outlook and his fierce ideological rejection of its ultimate implications. Presenting Conrad as ‘a modernist at war with modernity’, the book studies the perpetual tug-of-war between the artistic will to meaning and the writer’s susceptibility to the modern temper, both as a theme and as a structuring principle in his work. The modes of this struggle are defined as the ‘failure of myth’, the ‘failure of metaphysics’, and the ‘failure of textuality’. The inquiry draws on the work of Nietzsche, Vaihinger, Bakhtin, Heller, and MacIntyre, amongst others, to present the ethical and epistemological issues which are interwoven with Conrad’s aesthetics.Less

Joseph Conrad and the Modern Temper

Daphna Erdinast-Vulcan

Published in print: 1991-08-15

A study which relates Conrad’s work to the crisis of modernity in the late 19th century, this book discusses ‘faultlines’ — ambiguities and apparent aesthetic ruptures — in nine of the major novels and novellas. These faultlines are diagnosed as the symptoms of an unresolved tension between Conrad’s temperamental affinity with the Nietzschean outlook and his fierce ideological rejection of its ultimate implications. Presenting Conrad as ‘a modernist at war with modernity’, the book studies the perpetual tug-of-war between the artistic will to meaning and the writer’s susceptibility to the modern temper, both as a theme and as a structuring principle in his work. The modes of this struggle are defined as the ‘failure of myth’, the ‘failure of metaphysics’, and the ‘failure of textuality’. The inquiry draws on the work of Nietzsche, Vaihinger, Bakhtin, Heller, and MacIntyre, amongst others, to present the ethical and epistemological issues which are interwoven with Conrad’s aesthetics.

This chapter develops a causal model for explaining the performance of liberal democracies. The model builds on explanatory models from three theoretical strands: comparative research on democracy, ...
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This chapter develops a causal model for explaining the performance of liberal democracies. The model builds on explanatory models from three theoretical strands: comparative research on democracy, comparative public policy, and the veto player approach advocated in the context of the new institutionalism. It integrates formal and informal institutional factors as well as the three most-important non-institutional factors for explaining performance: the national level of wealth, the ideological orientation of the government, and the openness of the economy. The causal relationship between these factors is conceptualized on the basis of rational choice institutionalism. Furthermore, this chapter includes a discussion of the constitutional and partisan veto-player indices for measuring institutions. It concludes with a set of specific hypotheses on the effect of formal and informal institutions on political effectiveness.Less

A Model for Explaining the A Model for Explaining the Performance of Liberal Democracies

Edeltraud Roller

Published in print: 2005-09-29

This chapter develops a causal model for explaining the performance of liberal democracies. The model builds on explanatory models from three theoretical strands: comparative research on democracy, comparative public policy, and the veto player approach advocated in the context of the new institutionalism. It integrates formal and informal institutional factors as well as the three most-important non-institutional factors for explaining performance: the national level of wealth, the ideological orientation of the government, and the openness of the economy. The causal relationship between these factors is conceptualized on the basis of rational choice institutionalism. Furthermore, this chapter includes a discussion of the constitutional and partisan veto-player indices for measuring institutions. It concludes with a set of specific hypotheses on the effect of formal and informal institutions on political effectiveness.

This book offers a series of reflections on the state of Christianity, and especially Catholicism, in the world today. The centrepiece of the volume is a lecture by the renowned philosopher Charles ...
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This book offers a series of reflections on the state of Christianity, and especially Catholicism, in the world today. The centrepiece of the volume is a lecture by the renowned philosopher Charles Taylor, from which the title of the book is taken. The lecture, delivered at Dayton University in January of 1996, offered Taylor the opportunity to speak about his theological views and his sense of the cultural placement of Catholicism, its history and trajectory. Four well-known commentators on religion and society were invited to respond to Taylor's lecture: William M. Shea, George Marsden, Jean Bethke Elshtain, and Rosemary Luling–Haughton. Their chapters offer a variety of astute reflections on the tensions between religion and modernity, and in particular on the role that Catholicism can and should play in contemporary society.Less

A Catholic Modernity? : Charles Taylor's Marianist Award Lecture

Published in print: 1999-10-21

This book offers a series of reflections on the state of Christianity, and especially Catholicism, in the world today. The centrepiece of the volume is a lecture by the renowned philosopher Charles Taylor, from which the title of the book is taken. The lecture, delivered at Dayton University in January of 1996, offered Taylor the opportunity to speak about his theological views and his sense of the cultural placement of Catholicism, its history and trajectory. Four well-known commentators on religion and society were invited to respond to Taylor's lecture: William M. Shea, George Marsden, Jean Bethke Elshtain, and Rosemary Luling–Haughton. Their chapters offer a variety of astute reflections on the tensions between religion and modernity, and in particular on the role that Catholicism can and should play in contemporary society.